Development bus in Tintin rumpus

From European Voice's Entre-Nous column

8/1/07, 5:00 PM CET

Updated 4/23/14, 8:42 PM CET

The European Commission’s participation in Belgium’s national day celebrations on 21 July has become retrospectively controversial. In a commendable effort to close the gulf between the EU institutions and the surrounding country, the Commission’s development department joined in the festivities, sending its ‘development information bus’ to join the massed ranks of dustcarts, armoured cars and other vehicles that were on official duty.The contentious point was the cardboard cut-out figure that accompanied the bus. As various critics of DG Development have pointed out, it bears a close resemblance to figures of Africans in the 1931 book, ‘Tintin in the Congo’. That is not necessarily an example to be copied, even if Tintin is a Belgian national hero. The author of the Tintin books, Hergé (real name Georges Prosper Remi) later admitted he was embarrassed by his depiction of its African characters.The week before Belgian national day, the British Commission for Racial Equality said that ‘Tintin in the Congo’ should be banned for making black people “look like monkeys and talk like imbeciles”. Bookshops reported a 4,000% increase in sales following the Commission for Racial Equality’s comments.An official from DG Development said that their cartoon figures, including several of white people, had been designed by an independent consultancy and were not offensive. “When you go to Africa you see a lot of this kind of art,” he said. “As far as I know, ‘Tintin in the Congo’ is controversial not because of its cartoons but because of its content.”

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